Blaze Fast Fire’d Pizza has opened it second Louisville location today, one of the several restaurants to open at Middle Commons, 13317 Shelbyville Rd. To mark the occasion, that store will be giving away free pizzas all day from 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 30.

There is a caveat: the free pizzas go to everyone who follows Blaze Pizza on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.

The first Blaze Pizza outlet opened last year at 4600 Shelbyville Rd. in the Shelbyville Road Plaza. The concept is that they have one size pizza, which can be customized by the customer from a variety of sauces and toppings, and then the pie is flash-baked in a superhot oven in three minutes.

The Blaze Fast Fire’d Pizza stores in the area are operated by the Millennial Restaurant Group (the Patterson family, Junior Bridgman, et al.) They plan to open another Blaze Pizza in Lexington later this summer.

Refitting the former La Bodega Tapas bar at 1604 Bardstown Rd. into a Stout Burgers & Beer has been a slow process, but the end is in sight, and the California-based upscale burger chain has announced that it will finally open Monday, June 29. Continue reading Stout Burgers & Beer set to open Monday→

Perhaps if you grew up with a restaurant named after you, you would eventually have to get in the food business. Karma has worked on Lilly Cary, daughter of Kathy Cary and namesake of Lilly’s, Bardstown Rd. After baking at Please & Thank You on Market St., Lilly started making doughnuts served in La Peche, the takeout business connected to the restaurant. She has now started ROCKRGRL7 Donuts, a doughnut delivery service. Continue reading Lilly Cary makes doughnuts, and delivers→

Everyone who has cooked any sort of ethnic dishes–French, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Basque, Filipino, Malaysian, Briti…well, probably not British–knows that garlic is an essential ingredient, a taste that blends in with and accentuates so many other flavors, even while maintaining its own flavor integrity.

On June 27, from noon to 4 p.m., eight local chefs will challenge themselves and each other to devise the best sweet and savory dishes at the inaugural Garlic Harvest Cook Off, to be held at the Resurfaced space located downtown behind the facades of 615-621 West Main St. Admission to the event will be free; tastes of the dishes concocted will be sold for $2 each, with the proceeds going to Slow Food Bluegrass’s Garden Grant program.Continue reading Gala Garlic cook-off tests mettle of local chefs→

The restaurant space at the corner of Bardstown Rd. and Grinstead Dr., that has been Uncle Maddio’s Pizza Joint–one of the first businesses to occupy the renovated corner that had sat empty for some time after replacing the auto body shop that had been there–will in the near future become Fontleroys, to be opened by Allan Rosenberg, most recently executive chef at Cena.Continue reading Allan Rosenberg’s Fontleroys to open on Bardstown Rd.→

Louisville chefs and restaurants have been getting some national press lately, nowhere near enough, in some people’s eyes, but every bit helps to let others know the good things that are happening here.

Eater, the national on line restaurant news site, has named Louisville chef Ryan Rogers of Feast BBQ to their “Young Guns” list of the most promising chefs under 30. USA Today, which is always running polls, recently ran a survey to find the “Best Southern Fine Dining restaurants,” and Proof was one of the top ten at seven. Seven seems to be a lucky number in Louisville. Zagat, the national restaurant user guide, has ranked Louisville as one of the top “America’s Next Hot Food Cities” at seventh.

The Rudyard Kipling, the Old Louisville restaurant and entertainment venue at 422 W. Oak St. that has been a mainstay of the hipster scene for several decades, has announced that it is closing its food service immediately, though the last two music shows that have been announced, for June 19 and June 26 will go on as scheduled.